If you’re shopping for a house that offers a permanent vacation, you need go no farther than one of Darien’s largest waterfront properties — a 7.1-acre island estate that looks south to the Long Island Sound and north to the Goodwives River and Rings End Bridge.

With its family, billiards and AstroTurf playrooms, its heated, in-ground, salt-water pool/spa/outdoor shower and its dock affording space for kayaks and paddleboards, this home will never lack for recreational possibilities.

But the 8,332-square-foot contemporary colonial — which has five en suite bedrooms with water views and eight baths overall — has some intriguing historical and environmental ties.

Though built in 2009, the house contains glass, metal and ceramic artifacts that are remnants of the island’s mercantile past. And though it is surrounded by manicured lawns, gardens (including an extensive vegetable garden) and fruit trees, an adjacent 3.2 acres is a coastal meadow preserved by the Darien Land Trust. Bald eagles, blue herons, great egrets, turkeys, minks, foxes and other animals are all at play here. And you can catch striped bass and bluefish off the new dock, which offers boat access to the channel and the moorings in the harbor. (The old one, the remains of which were around as late as the 1990s, was used for transporting hay by barge in the horse-and-buggy days.)

The house combines such state-of-the-art features as geothermal and radiant heat, insulated windows and sprinkler, alarm and audio systems with charming traditional touches, including 12-foot ceilings, limestone fireplaces and 10 sets of French doors that open onto a flagstone terrace.

All for a mere $17.5 million. But then, what price serenity?

For more, contact Kim Huffard at 203-858-6033, 203-655-8234 or khuffard@williampitt.com.

Share on

Georgette Gouveia, WAG’s editor in chief, is the author of “Water Music” (Greenleaf Book Group) and “The Penalty for Holding,” which will be published next year by Less Than Three Press. They’re part of her series of novels, “The Games Men Play,” which is the name of the sports/culture blog she writes at thegamesmenplay.com. Readers may also find weekly installments of her novel “Seamless Sky” on wattpad.com.